1 This post-print includes the introduction, chapter 4 and the conclusion of the book ‘van de Haar, A. (2019). The Golden Mean of Languages. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.’ The publication is uploaded with permission of Brill. More information on the book is available at https://brill.com/view/title/35813.
1. Introduction. Fascinating Multilingualism
1.1. Introduction
The year 1546 constitutes a pivotal moment in the history of the Dutch language. It was in this year that Ghent schoolmaster and printer Joos Lambrecht published his Naembouck. Not only was this the first alphabetically ordered dictionary with a variant of Dutch as its source language, it is also considered to be the first purist dictionary of this vernacular. As such, the
Naembouck is part of a sixteenth-century trend in the Low Countries, that focused on the
rejection of foreign—usually French or Latin—loanwords. Needless to say, no historical overview of the Dutch tongue fails to mention this work. However, rather than a monolingual feat focused solely on the promotion of Dutch, the Naembouck is a Dutch-French dictionary designed for the instruction of the latter tongue. Moreover, Lambrecht used a new way of spelling both Dutch and French words that was strongly inspired by French orthographical treatises.
2
Illustration, Purification, Construction, Standardization
The sixteenth century was marked by the production of a large number of dictionaries, orthographical treatises, and grammars of many of the languages of Europe. Everywhere, people were fascinated with language. While many observations on classical and exotic languages, such as Persian, were written down, a great deal of work was done on the local vernaculars as well.1 Scholars interested in this early modern language fascination have largely
approached the topic from the point of view of one particular language. Such an initial monolingual approach was stimulated in part by the fragmentation of language departments at universities that has existed since the nineteenth century. Moreover, well-defined studies were needed to lay a solid foundation before further comparative and cross-over research could be undertaken. However, to this day, only one monograph, written in the 1950s, deals with the early-modern discussions about the vernacular which took place in the Low Countries: Lode Van den Branden’s Het streven naar verheerlijking, zuivering en opbouw van het Nederlands
in de 16e eeuw.2
While he deserves praise for identifying large quantities of sources dealing with the Dutch language, Van den Branden’s interpretations were, congruent with the contemporary research paradigm, guided by a teleological focus, trying to reveal how the Dutch language of his own time had come into being. He summarized the versatile discussions on language in the sixteenth-century Low Countries through the triptych of ‘illustration, purification, and construction of Dutch’ also mentioned in his title. The manifold reflections have thus been reduced to three strands which were, indeed, strongly present. The first term, ‘illustration’ (‘verheerlijking’), receives no explanation by Van den Branden, but seems to target the same sense as Joachim Du Bellay’s 1549 manifesto on the French vernacular, La deffence, et
illvstration de la Langue Francoyse.3 ‘Illustration’ in this context signifies rendering
something—in this case, language—illustrious. ‘Purification’ (‘zuivering’) is the call for an exclusion of loanwords from other languages.4 ‘Construction’ (‘opbouw’), lastly, targets the
1 The Persian language was discussed by humanists, such as Franciscus Raphelengius and Justus Lipsius. T. Van
Hal, ‘The Earliest Stages of Persian-German Language Comparison’. In G. Hassler (Ed.), History of Linguistics 2008: Selected Papers from the 11th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2011). See: Chapter 3.3.
2 The Pursuit of Illustration, Purification, and Construction of Dutch in the 16th Century. L. Van den Branden, Het
streven naar verheerlijking, zuivering en opbouw van het Nederlands in de 16e eeuw (Arnhem: Gijsbers & Van
Loon, 1967). An earlier edition of this book appeared in 1956.
3 J. Du Bellay, La deffence, et illvstration de la Langue Francoyse (Paris: Arnoul l’Angelier, 1549). I am grateful
to Peter Burke for this suggestion.
4 Van den Branden’s definition of purification is a narrow one, focusing on loanwords alone and not on the
3 creation of a standard, regularized, and uniform language that is suitable for any speech domain, be it literary or scholarly.5
Van den Branden’s tripartite view, which is often repeated in more recent studies, indeed represents a considerable part of the opinions that were put forward by sixteenth-century language debaters.6 Many individuals praised Dutch, called for a rejection of words that had
been borrowed from French and Latin, and proposed certain rules. Contemporaries also proposed, nevertheless, a range of nuanced viewpoints and contradicting statements that do not fit Van den Branden’s three main topics. The Dutch language was not moving in such a clear direction as it might have seemed. Furthermore, the general fascination with language and wish to develop the vernacular which was prevalent at that time expressed itself in many more ways—for instance, as enquiries into the differences between languages, their particular characteristics, their histories, and so on. Moreover, there was a broad interest in languages other than Dutch: some inhabitants of the Low Countries, including native speakers of Dutch, also praised French and designed rules for its use.
Van den Branden had a particular focus on calls for purification, highlighting the earliest authors who spoke out against loanwords but leaving out those who defended them, since they represented the norm.7 This led to the common misconception among scholars after Van den
Branden that the anti-loanword movement was widely supported and knew little resistance. Marco Prandoni, for instance, assumed that the sixteenth-century Low Countries knew an ‘obsession of purity’ or even ‘an anti-French crusade in language’.8 These are overstatements:
most language debaters had a nuanced opinion on loanwords, accepting them under certain conditions. Furthermore, many of those who supported borrowing explained their position with argumentations that reveal a conscious reflection on the nature of their mother tongue and a wish to develop Dutch. Because he did not count defences of borrowing as attempts to support
in the Germanic Languages (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005), 3-4; N. Langer & A. Nesse, ‘Linguistic Purism’. In J. M. Hernández-Campoy & J. C. Conde-Silvestre (Eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 608.
5 Van den Branden, Het streven naar verheerlijking.
6 See, for instance: M. J. van der Wal & C. van Bree, Geschiedenis van het Nederlands, fifth edition, (Houten:
Spectrum, 2008), 186, 191, 195; J. Jansen, ‘“Sincere Simplicity”: Gerbrand Bredero’s Apprenticeship with Coornhert and Spiegel’. Dutch Crossing, 41, 1 (2017), 6.
7 Various monographs have been devoted to the issue of loanwords in European languages. See, for instance: J. J.
Salverda de Grave, De Franse woorden in het Nederlands (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1920); N. van der Sijs, Leenwoordenboek: De invloed van andere talen op het Nederlands (The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers, 1996); P. Durkin. Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
8 M. Prandoni, ‘Vive la France, à bas la France ! Contradictory Attitude Toward the Appropriation of French
4 Dutch, Van den Branden equated only purification with construction. This presents a problematic contradiction in his work.
Wishing to contextualize his findings, Van den Branden pointed out three major supposed causes of the debates: Renaissance, humanism, and patriotism.9 There is a grain of
truth in this presentation of events, but it requires some complementary remarks.10 As Van den
Branden’s own examples amply show, these reflections on language were not confined to individuals with academic training, and many humanist scholars interacted with people from outside academic circles.11 The fact that we know few examples of Latin texts commenting on
vernacular treatises is, perhaps, caused in part by the fact that scholarly interest in mutual Latin-vernacular exchange is a relatively recent development.12
When reading early modern reflections on language, the notion of ‘fatherland’ is indeed recurrent, as are expressions of competition with other regions and languages.13 Van den
9 On the link between patriotism and language debates in the early modern period, see also: F. Chiappelli (Ed.),
The Fairest Flower: The Emergence of Linguistic National Consciousness in Renaissance Europe (Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 1985); J. Noordegraaf, ‘Nationalistische tendensen in de Nederlandse taalkunde’. In J. H. Hulstijn & S. R. Slings (Eds.), Eigen en vreemd: Identiteit en ontlening in taal, literatuur en beeldende kunst (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1987); M. J. van der Wal, ‘De Opstand en de taal: Nationaal bewustzijn en het gebruik van het Nederlands in het politieke krachtenveld’. De Zeventiende Eeuw, 10, 1 (1994); M. Gosman, ‘“A chaque nation sa langue” ou le triomphe du vulgaire’. In R. Nip (Ed.), Media Latinitas: A Collection of Essays to Mark the Occasion of the Retirement of L. J. Engels (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), esp. 66.
10 G. Rutten, ‘Waarom verscheen de Twe-Spraack in 1584?’ In T. Van Hal, L. Isebaert, & P. Swiggers (Eds.), De
tuin der talen: Taalstudie en taalcultuur in de Lage Landen, 1450–1750 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013).
11 See: J. D. Janssens, ‘Het humanisme en de volkstaal (in het 16e-eeuwse Brabant)’. In J. D. Janssens, C.
Matheeussen, & L. Verbesselt (Eds.), Humanisme in Brabant (Leuven: Acco, 1985); R. Waswo, Language and Meaning in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 136; L. Formigari, A History of Language Philosophies (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004), 100-101; T. Van Hal, “Moedertalen en taalmoeders”: Het vroegmoderne taalvergelijkende onderzoek in de Lage Landen (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 2010); T. Deneire, ‘Ruzie in het Latijn over de volkstaal? Een poëtische dialoog tussen Caspar Barlaeus en Constantijn Huygens herbezien’. Spiegel der Letteren, 54, 1 (2012); J. Leonhardt, Latin: Story of a World Language (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 194; P. Swiggers, ‘Taalonderricht en taalstudie in de vroegmoderne periode: Het pad naar de volkstalen’. In J. Papy (Ed.), Het Leuvense Collegium Trilingue 1517–1797: Erasmus, humanistische onderwijspraktijk en het nieuwe taleninstituut Latijn – Grieks – Hebreeuws (Leuven, Paris, & Bristol CT: Peeters, 2017), 71-73.
12 See the following two projects of Jan Bloemendal: ‘Latin and Vernacular Cultures: Theatre and Public Opinion
in the Netherlands, ca. 1510–1621’ (2004-2009), which resulted in a volume published in 2015, and ‘Dynamics of Neo-Latin and the Vernacular’ (2010-2014), which led to the publication of a collection of articles in 2014. J. Bloemendal, ‘Introduction: Dynamics of Neo-Latin and the Vernacular: Some Thoughts Regarding Its Approach’. In T. Deneire (Ed.), Dynamics of Neo-Latin and the Vernacular: Language and Poetics, Translation and Transfer (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2014); T. Deneire, ‘Introduction: Dynamics of Neo-Latin and the Vernacular: Ηistory and Ιntroduction’. In T. Deneire (Ed.), Dynamics of Neo-Latin and the Vernacular: Language and Poetics, Translation and Transfer (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2014); J. Bloemendal, ‘Introduction: Bilingualism, Multilingualism and the Formation of Europe’. In J. Bloemendal (Ed.), Bilingual Europe: Latin and Vernacular Cultures, Examples of Bilingualism and Multilingualism c. 1300–1800 (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2015). See further: J. Bloemendal, A. van Dixhoorn, & E. Strietman (Eds.), Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Low Countries, 1450–1650 (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2011).
13 On the historicity of the notion of national pride and its connection to one or multiple languages, see: D. A. Bell,
5 Branden’s idea of patriotism, however, is one that rejects other languages and that is only interested in the French model in so far as it can be surpassed. This narrow conception of love for the fatherland does injustice to the open-minded and multilingual ways in which inhabitants of the Low Countries, such as Lambrecht, supported both their local languages. The debates on the French language stood in continuity with those on Dutch, as ideas and arguments circulated and were assessed critically before they were adapted and adopted.
Besides Van den Branden’s work on the language debates, histories of Dutch have appeared at regular intervals over the past century, generally tracing the development of standard Dutch.14 This approach was applied by, among others, Guy Janssens, Ann Marynissen,
Nicoline van der Sijs, and Roland Willemyns. They have laid the groundwork for scholars engaging with historical forms of Dutch while also appealing to members of the broader public wishing to learn the story of their mother tongue. By their very nature, however, their works rarely engaged with the fundamentally multilingual context in which the Dutch language evolved. A study by Ulrike Vogl on the terminology used in a selection of these overview works even revealed that they often harbour a negative attitude towards contact with French and Latin.15 Guy Janssens and Ann Marynissen, for instance, described French as a ‘threat’ to
Dutch, and in general the term ‘Frenchification’ is often used to pejoratively describe French influence on the presumed purity and homogeneity of Dutch.16
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); D. Cowling, ‘Constructions of Nationhood in the Latin Writings of Henri Estienne’. Renæssanceforum, 8, (2012).
14 M. J. van der Wal, De moedertaal centraal: Standaardisatie-aspecten in de Nederlanden omstreeks 1650 (The
Hague: Sdu Uitgevers, 1995); N. van der Sijs, Taal als mensenwerk: Het ontstaan van het ABN (The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers, 2004); G. Janssens & A. Marynissen, Het Nederlands vroeger en nu (Leuven: Acco, 2005); N. van der Sijs, Calendarium van de Nederlandse taal: De geschiedenis van het Nederlands in jaartallen (The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers, 2006); Van der Wal & Van Bree, Geschiedenis van het Nederlands; R. Willemyns, Dutch: Biography of a Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
15 This negative modern view on language mixing neglects the fact that, at heart, no modern language ever knew a
state of purity, as they are all, to some degree, derived from pre-existing ones. Langer & Nesse, ‘Linguistic Purism’, 609-610.
16 U. Vogl, ‘Standard Language Ideology and the History of Romance-Germanic Encounters’. In C. Peersman, G.
6 Until a few decades ago, an important topic of interest in the fields of Dutch historical linguistics and the history of the Dutch language was the process of standardization.17 Scholars
in these fields succesfully traced the movement from a plurality of language forms to one uniform language, based on a model designed by Einar Haugen. The four core processes of standardization proposed by Haugen are: the selection of a preferred language variety; the codification of this variety; the expansion of the function of this language form in public and private domains; and finally the acceptance of the selected and codified variety by the community.18
Over the past decades, historical linguists like Marijke van der Wal have come to realize that the concept of standardization alone does not suffice to grasp the variety of historical reality.19 Their research has now shifted to complement studies of uniformity with studies of
variation.20 This book builds on this shift to show that such a level of diversity was equally
present in metalinguistic discourse, that is, reflections on language, on what the rules of a language should be or in what contexts it should be used.21
Until now, the early modern debates on language have been studied primarily by historical linguists and historians of language, while understanding them is an essential prerequisite for appreciating the literary culture of the time. They largely played out within the
17 See the titles of the language histories of Marijke van der Wal and Nicoline van der Sijs: De moedertaal centraal:
Standaardisatie-aspecten in de Nederlanden omstreeks 1650 (1995) and Taal als mensenwerk: Het ontstaan van het ABN (2004).
18 On the process of standardization, see: E. Haugen, ‘Dialect, Language, Nation’. American Anthropologist, 68, 4
(1966); J. E. Joseph, Eloquence and Power: The Rise of Language Standards and Standard Languages (London: Frances Pinter Publishers, 1987); Van der Wal, De moedertaal centraal; R. Appel & P. Muysken, Language Contact and Bilingualism, second edition, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), 46-55. For additions to Haugen’s four central processes, see: J. Milroy & L. Milroy, Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription & Standardisation, second edition, (London & New York: Routledge, 1991), 26-28.
19 R. J. Watts & P. Trudgill (Eds.), Alternative Histories of English (London: Routledge, 2002); M. J. van der Wal,
Onvoltooid verleden tijd: Witte vlekken in de taalgeschiedenis (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2006), esp. 6-7; M. J. van der Wal, ‘Standaardtalen in beweging: Standaardisatie en destandaardisatie in Nederland, Vlaanderen en Zuid-Afrika’. In M. J. van der Wal & E. Francken (Eds.), Standaardtalen in beweging (Amsterdam: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU, 2010); U. Vogl, ‘Multilingualism in a Standard Language Culture’. In M. Hüning, U. Vogl, & O. Moliner (Eds.), Standard Languages and Multilingualism in European History (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2012), 19-20; R. J. Watts, ‘Language Myths’. In J. M. Hernández-Campoy & J. C. Conde-Silvestre (Eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
20 See, for instance: W. Ayres-Bennett, A History of the French Language Through Texts (London & New York:
Routledge, 1996); W. Ayres-Bennett, Sociolinguistic Variation in Seventeenth-Century France: Methodology and Case Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); M. J. van der Wal & G. Rutten, ‘Ego-Documents in a Historical-Sociolinguistic Perspective’. In M. J. van der Wal & G. Rutten (Eds.), Touching the Past: Studies in the Historical Sociolinguistics of Ego-Documents (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2013); G. Rutten & M. J. van der Wal, Letters as Loot: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2014). See also the project ‘Language Dynamics in the Dutch Golden Age’, which studies the variety of language forms within the works of individual authors from the seventeenth century.
21 On the notion of metalinguistic thought, see: S. Auroux, ‘Pour une histoire des idées linguistiques’. Revue de
7 literary domain and for the most part concerned the language of writing. This book aims to look at the reflections on language from a literary historical perspective, placing them in their multilingual literary context rather than in a temporal development towards modern language forms. In the same way that Van den Branden’s study matched the contemporary paradigm of the search for the standardization of individual languages, this book stands within the current paradigm that looks for syntheses between a variety of approaches, in this case historical (socio)linguistics and historical literature, and research into standardization and diversity, monolingualism and multilingualism.
Multilingual Research Axis
In the last few decades, scholars have increasingly ventured to adopt a multilingual scope.22
Historical multilingualism is now an established field of research, mapping the presence of multiple languages in specific environments, as well as the impact of that presence.23 A general
22 K. Braunmüller & G. Ferraresi, ‘Introduction’. In K. Braunmüller & G. Ferraresi (Eds.), Aspects of
Multilingualism in European Language History (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003); P. Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); C. Peersman, G. Rutten, & R. Vosters (Eds.), Past, Present and Future of a Language Border: Germanic-Romance Encounters in the Low Countries (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). This development is also visible in the project ‘Medieval Francophone Literary Cultures Outside France’ (2011-2015), led by Simon Gaunt. Claire Kappler and Suzanne Thiolier-Méjean have even ventured to break free from the disproportionate focus on Europe in a volume on medieval multilingualism: C. Kappler & S. Thiolier-Méjean (Eds.), Le Plurilinguisme au Moyen Âge : Orient-Occident, de Babel à la langue une (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008).
23 L. Forster, The Poet’s Tongues: Multilingualism in Literature (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970); D.
8 acceptance has emerged of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the ‘inter-animation of languages’.24
With this term Bakhtin referred to the heightened awareness of and interest in language caused by the intensity of language contact in the early modern period. He stated that through the ‘complex intersection of languages, dialects, idioms, and jargons the literary and linguistic consciousness of the Renaissance was formed’.25
Indeed, it has become more and more clear that the large corpus of sixteenth-century European works studying and reflecting on language cannot be understood without taking into account the multilingualism that characterized this region.26 Learning to speak or simply
encountering another language besides one’s mother tongue seems to create a certain distance with regard to the native language that allows one to question its form and nature.27 Of course,
language comparison is not even possible without the knowledge of at least two languages, and thus by definition is unavailable to monolinguals. In the Low Countries, the multilingualism that could foster language awareness was present on all levels of society. This is no less true for the literary culture in which the language debates took place.
In light of this realization, there is a need to recontextualize the sixteenth-century debates on the Dutch language and consider them against the backdrop of the existing vernacular situation, which equally included French. This consideration makes it possible—or even logical—for the author of this book, having a background in French literary history, to
24 In the original Russian text, Bakhtin used the terms ‘interaction’ and ‘interorientation’ next to ‘inter-animation’.
M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (H. Iswolsky, Tr.), (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 470-471; P. Burke, ‘Cultures of Translation in Early Modern Europe’. In P. Burke & R. Po-chia Hsia (Eds.), Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 36.
25 Bakhtin, Rabelais, 470-471.
26 S. Delesalle & F. Mazière, ‘Meigret, la langue française et la tradition grammaticale’. In G. Defaux (Ed.), Lyon
et l’illustration de la langue française à la Renaissance (Lyon: ENS Éditions, 2003), 48-49; V. Law, The History of Linguistics in Europe: From Plato to 1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 58-60; Burke, Languages and Communities, 29, 67; C. Maass, ‘Mehrsprachigkeit: Sprachbewusstsein in der Renaissance zwischen Ideal und textueller Praxis’. In C. Maass & A. Volmer (Eds.), Mehrsprachigkeit in der Renaissance (Heidelberg: Winter, 2005), 14-15; S. Van Rossem, ‘Leven voor taal: Een portret van Cornelis Kiliaan’. In S. Van Rossem (Ed.), Portret van een woordenaar: Cornelis Kiliaan en het woordenboek in de Nederlanden (Antwerp: Provincie Antwerpen, 2007), 14; P. Burke, Cultural Hybridity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 31; Van Hal, “Moedertalen en taalmoeders”, 67; B. Ramakers, ‘As Many Lands, As Many Customs: Vernacular Self-Awareness Among the Netherlandish Rhetoricians’. In J. P. Keizer & T. M. Richardson (Eds.), The Transformation of Vernacular Expression in Early Modern Arts (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012); T. Van Hal, L. Isebaert, & P. Swiggers, ‘Taaldiversiteit en taalfascinatie in de Renaissance: Een inleiding tot, en rondleiding door, de “tuin der talen”’. In T. Van Hal, L. Isebaert, & P. Swiggers (Eds.), De tuin der talen: Taalstudie en taalcultuur in de Lage Landen, 1450–1750 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), xii-xiii; T. Gruber, Mehrsprachigkeit und Sprachreflexion in der Frühen Neuzeit: Das Spanische im Königreich Neapel. Romanica Monacensia 81 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2014); M. Saenger, ‘Introduction’. In M. Saenger (Ed.), Interlinguicity, Internationality, and Shakespeare (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014); J. Gallagher, Learning Languages in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
27 Delesalle & Mazière, ‘Meigret’, 48-49; Law, The History of Linguistics in Europe, 58-60; Gallagher, Learning
9 engage in this study on the literary culture of the Low Countries, thus strengthening the vital connection between French and Dutch literary studies. This book aims to show that reflections on both vernacular languages of the sixteenth-century Low Countries were connected to and shaped by the local multilingual praxis, in which two vernaculars coexisted next to Latin. Paying attention to the multilingual reality in which these considerations emerged reveals that the sixteenth-century discussions on language in the Low Countries were part of a Europe-wide fascination with language characterized by an interest in both local and foreign languages.
The central contention that language encounters sparked reflection and debate in the multilingual Low Countries can be illustrated on a micro-scale by adopting a spatial approach. Zooming in on particular places where individuals dealt with different languages makes it possible to trace the connections between their experiences and the degree and form of their language awareness. A translator of songs might be expected to reflect on tonality and sound structure, while a language teacher would be more interested in spelling.
Four sites or lieux have been selected: French schools, where mostly Dutch-speaking children learned French: Calvinist churches; printing houses; and chambers of rhetoric, fraternities whose members, called rhetoricians, gathered regularly to practise and discuss the art of rhetoric in the vernacular and thus produced many literary works. They furnish case studies of how the interaction of people, languages, objects, and practices in a particular environment gave rise to certain questions in the sixteenth-century Low Countries. Each of these environments will be analysed in a separate chapter.
10
Debate
Instead of using the notion of language progress as a framework for this study, it is the notion of debate that will be applied as a heuristic key to understand the sixteenth-century field of language reflection. This concept allows for an approach that takes into consideration all different voices and opinions, rather than the ones that came out on top. Whereas the term ‘dynamics’ has been proposed to study the interplay of different languages within the literary scene of this period, it hides the individuals behind it.28 The concept of debate brings them back
to the stage.
Applying the notion of debate, moreover, is consistent with the observation of a culture of discussion in the more general sense in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Low Countries, where discussion was fundamental to society.29 Historians of science have further
shown that in this period, knowledge was generated and spread through debate and exchange, while the social element ensured the creation of communities of learning.30 Not all of the texts
under scrutiny had explicit polemical purposes, but they all built on and added to the broader discourse on language that took shape in this period. Some authors introduced an element of play by mocking other language debaters through their rhetorically written contributions. Individuals such as Marnix thus used reflections on language to criticize others, in his case Catholics. His case further shows that the exchanges on language also harboured an ideological aspect. By pursuing the improvement of the language situation in the fatherland, they strove to benefit the common good.
28 L. Nauta, ‘Introduction’. In L. Nauta (Ed.), Language and Cultural Change: Aspects of the Study and Use of
Language in the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Leuven: Peeters, 2006); Deneire, ‘Introduction’, 5; E. Kammerer & J.-D. Müller, ‘Avant-Propos. Vorwort’. In E. Kammerer & Müller (Eds.), Imprimeurs et libraires de la Renaissance : le travail de la langue. Sprachpolitik der Drucker, Verleger und Buchhändler der Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2015), 15.
29 W. T. M. Frijhoff & M. Spies, 1650, Bevochten eendracht: Nederlandse cultuur in Europese context (The Hague:
Sdu Uitgevers, 1999), 218-224; A. van Dixhoorn, Lustige geesten: Rederijkers in de Noordelijke Nederlanden (1480–1650) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 30-33. See also: K. Conermann, ‘Das Deutsche und die Vielsprachigkeit in der Frühzeit der Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft: Der Köthener Hof als Laboratorium der Sprach- und Versarbeit’. In J. Balsamo & A. K. Bleuler (Eds.), Les cours comme lieux de rencontre et d’élaboration des langues vernaculaires (1480–1620). Höfe als Laboratorien der Volkssprachigkeit (1480–1620) (Geneva: Droz, 2016), 335-336, 354; S. Dessì Schmid & J. Hafner, ‘Die italienischen und französischen Akademien als Zentren frühneuzeitlicher höfischer Sprachdiskussion’. In J. Balsamo & A. K. Bleuler (Eds.), Les cours comme lieux de rencontre et d’élaboration des langues vernaculaires (1480–1620). Höfe als Laboratorien der Volkssprachigkeit (1480–1620) (Geneva: Droz, 2016), 395-396.
30 R. Buys, Sparks of Reason: Vernacular Rationalism in the Low Countries 1550–1670 (Hilversum: Verloren,
11 This is a story of plurality and debate rather than of linear progress. It wishes to incorporate diversity, contradictory opinions, and the viewpoints of seemingly marginal figures.31 It thus also considers supporters of the other vernacular of the country, French. All
those who expressed their views on language had a particular vision to improve communication, to find a golden mean among the many proposals for language change, and therefore they all deserve to be heard. These different voices came forth from diverse environments in which specific observations of language and language contact could be made. Combining the central notion of debate with a spatial approach allows the inclusion of previously overlooked individuals. This approach makes it possible to present the sixteenth-century history of the languages of the Low Countries as one of diversity and multilingualism.
Language Fascination and Interconnectedness
The sixteenth-century Europe-wide attention to language has been the object of study for an array of historians. Despite various efforts to conceptualize it, no suitable terminology has yet been developed to describe this intensifying early modern interest in all aspects of modern and ancient languages. Here, the notion of ‘fascination with language’ is proposed to describe and refer to the shifting attitude towards language in the early modern period.
Traditionally, the discussions on the form and status of the vernaculars are seen as starting with the Italian questione della lingua (debate on language), concerning the question of whether Latin or a vernacular dialect should be used as the language of writing.32 Allegedly,
this questione ended in the consensus that the Tuscan dialect of the tre corone (three crowns)— Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio—was to be adopted. From Italy, this debate then supposedly spread all over the continent, resulting in the question de la langue in France, which in its turn influenced the Dutch taalkwestie, the English language question, the German Frage nach der
Sprache, and so forth.33 However, it has become increasingly clear in recent decades that for
31 See also: B. Cerquiglini, La genèse de l’orthographe française (XIIe–XVIIe siècles) (Paris: Honoré Champion,
2004), 31, 49; A. Moyer, ‘Distinguishing Florentines, Defining Italians: The Language Question and Cultural Identities in Sixteenth-Century Florence’. In Philip Soergel (Ed.), Nation, Ethnicity, and Identity in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (New York: AMS Press, 2006), 131-135, 153.
32 Van der Wal, De moedertaal centraal, 5; J.-L. Fournel, ‘La question de la langue comme la question des langues’.
In E. Kammerer & J.-D. Müller (Eds.), Imprimeurs et libraires de la Renaissance : le travail de la langue. Sprachpolitik der Drucker, Verleger und Buchhändler der Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2015), 34-35. On the questione della lingua, see: B. Migliorini & T. G. Griffith, The Italian Language (London: Faber, 1966), 215-224.
33 R. F. Jones, The Triumph of the English Language: A Survey of Opinions Concerning the Vernacular from the
12 each of these regions, starting with the Italian case, this depiction of the reflections on language is reductionist.34 The discussions were not just concerned with the defence of the vernaculars
against Latin and the selection of the best dialect, they were part of a much wider interest in language.
Terms such as the ‘rise of the vernaculars’, the ‘vernacular revolution’, and the ‘vernacular turn’, which were proposed as equivalents for the ‘language question’, as well as the latter term itself, have all been gradually abandoned in recent decades as they do injustice the diversity of the debates on language.35 Peter Burke proposed the term ‘discovery of
language’ to describe the heightened interest shown in in language in the sixteenth century.36
With this term, Burke expressly does not wish to imply that in earlier ages language was in an ‘undiscovered’ state, and that no one in Antiquity or the Middle Ages was studying languages. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the term risks suggesting: it cannot disentangle itself from the implication of a breach with earlier centuries, which is why it will not be adopted here.
Instead, the term ‘fascination with language’ is used to describe the changing attitudes towards language in the sixteenth century.37 A lively culture of interaction, exchange, and
debate on language came into being that was present—or at least visible—to a lesser degree in earlier centuries. People like Marnix started collecting and debating fragments of exotic and ancient languages, while print shops such as Plantin’s met the growing demand for works displaying and commenting on languages. Instead of pointing out an opposition with earlier times, the notion of fascination expresses how the already existing interest in language
Renaissance’. In M. Haspelmath & E. König (Eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals. Vol. 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001); J. Trabant, Mithridates im Paradies: Kleine Geschichte des Sprachdenkens (München: C. H. Beck, 2003), 112-113; H. Sanson, ‘The Romance Languages in the Renaissance and After’. In A. Ledgeway, M. Maiden, & J. C. Smith (Eds.), The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages. Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 245.
34 B. Richardson, ‘Questions of Language’. In Z. Baranski & R. West (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion in Modern
Italian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); P. Cohen, ‘L’imaginaire d’une langue nationale : L’État, les langues et l’invention du mythe de l’ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts à l’époque moderne en France’. Histoire Épistémologie Langage, 25, 1 (2003); Trabant, Mithridates im Paradies, 86; P. Burke, Towards a Social History of Early Modern Dutch (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), 28-29; Moyer, ‘Distinguishing Florentines’.
35 W. K. Percival, ‘Understanding the Vernacular Turn’. In G. Hassler & P. Schmitter (Ed.), Sprachdiskussion und
Beschreibung von Sprachen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 1999); B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition, (London: Verso, 2006).
36 Burke, Languages and Communities, 15-16. See also: H. Pedersen, The Discovery of Language: Linguistic
Science in the Nineteenth Century (J. Webster Spargo, Tr.), (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962).
37 Toon Van Hal, Lambert Isebaert, and Pierre Swiggers used the term ‘language fascination’ (‘taalfascinatie’) in
13 significantly heightened and intensified in this period. Although it is impossible to deduct from the extant source material how far this fascination really stretched, in practice it probably mostly concerned urbanized environments, and particularly those cities in which multilingualism was an everyday phenomenon.
Because of the vastness of the early modern discussions on language on the European continent, students of this topic face the difficult task of clearly delineating and defining the object of their research. Focusing on only a particular part, however, necessarily maintains a level of artificiality. Past scholars chose for the most part to demarcate their topics of research by following modern-day political or linguistic borders. Historians of the French language were thus in large part preoccupied with what happened in the present Hexagone.38 Their colleagues
working on Dutch stuck largely to the Dutch-speaking Low Countries. In each case, attention was paid to foreign influence in as far as it followed the supposed chain of emulation starting with the questione della lingua. French emulations of Italian, and Dutch emulations of French were thus emphasized.
Ulrich Beck and Natan Sznaider have pointed out the pitfalls of confining historical research to the borders of (present-day) nations, terming this approach ‘methodological nationalism’.39 A characteristic mistake of this approach, they state, is to assume the ‘collapse
of social boundaries with state boundaries’.40 For the sixteenth-century Low Countries, this
assumption is certainly erroneous. Plantin was a Frenchman who settled down in Antwerp, Heyns fled from Brabant to Germany to Holland, and Marnix’s diplomatic travels brought him all over Europe. The solution to this pitfall offered by Beck and Sznaider, as well as by the founders of the scholarly fields of Histoire croisée and Transfer Studies, is multi-perspectivity: studying topics not only within the set confinements, but also across them, in multiple directions.41 Rather than solely studying the influence of French thinkers in the Low Countries,
the possibility of reverse influence should also be considered. In this manner, a glimpse of the
38 See, notably: F. Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900. Vol. 1. De l’époque latine à la
Renaissance (Paris: Colin, 1905); F. Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900. Vol. 2. Le seizième siècle (Paris: Colin, 1906).
39 U. Beck & N. Sznaider, ‘Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences: A Research Agenda’. The British
Journal of Sociology, 57, 1 (2006). See also: J. Marjanen, ‘Undermining Methodological Nationalism: Histoire Croisée of Concepts as Transnational History’. In M. Albert, G. Bluhm, J. Helmig, A. Leutzsch, & J. Walter (Eds.), Transnational Political Spaces: Agents – Structures – Encounters (Frankfurt & New York: Campus Verlag, 2009).
40 Beck & Sznaider, ‘Unpacking Cosmopolitanism’, 3.
41 Beck & Sznaider, ‘Unpacking Cosmopolitanism’; M. Werner & B. Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire
14 interconnectedness of the European debates can be caught through a focus on this particular region.
For several decades now, scholars have sought ways to consider the early modern attention to language as a European whole. Marie-Luce Demonet, Jürgen Trabant, and Peter Burke included examples from all over Europe and beyond in their monographs on sixteenth-century language reflections.42 More recently, the notion of a ‘Republic of Languages’ has been
coined by Fabien Simon to refer to the early modern European level, parallel to the Republic of Letters, on which discussions on the perfect language took place.43 The willingness to adopt
a multilingual and multidirectional approach is certainly growing. In many cases, however, attempts to transcend the confines of national borders still take the form of a series of monolingual overviews. Addressing the Dutch, French, English, Spanish, and Italian cases consecutively, such studies confirm the importance of a multilingual outlook, but they do not yet take the next step and reveal the interconnectedness of these various cases.44
Paying attention to the relations with the Europe-wide discussions is imperative but should not obscure the link with the local debates. There was a sense of competition towards other languages and cultures as much as towards local predecessors.45 Lambrecht’s Naembouck
built on both word lists produced in the Low Countries and French spelling debates. Competitive attitudes did not lead to a complete rejection, but to conscious reflections on how the example set by the local and European competitors could be used to benefit a particular language.
1.2. Scope and definitions
It is important to problematize some of the parameters that have been chosen for this book. Although something was obviously happening in the second half of the sixteenth century, the dates 1540 and especially 1620 form no absolute frontiers, nor can any breach with previous and later ways of dealing with language be distinguished. Similar remarks can be made on
42 M.-L. Demonet, Les voix du signe : nature et origine du langage à la Renaissance (1480–1580), (Paris: Honoré
Champion, 1992); Trabant, Mithridates im Paradies; Burke, Languages and Communities. See also the Franco-German Eurolab project ‘Dynamique des langues vernaculaires dans l’Europe de la Renaissance : acteurs et lieux. Dynamik der Volkssprachigkeit im Europa der Renaissance: Akteure und Orte’, led by Elsa Kammerer and Jan-Dirk Müller.
43 F. D. Simon, Sortir de Babel : une République des Langues en quête d’une “langue universelle” à la Renaissance
et à l’Âge classique ? Unpublished dissertation (Rennes: Université Rennes 2, 2011).
44 See, for instance: Van der Wal, De moedertaal centraal, 5-21; S. Baddeley & A. Voeste (Eds.), Orthographies
in Early Modern Europe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012).
15 geographic frontiers. The French-Dutch language border was not a clear one, making vernacular multilingualism an essential characteristic of the culture of the Low Countries.
The discussions on language were not, furthermore, confined by the political frontiers of the Low Countries, not even where it concerned Dutch. On the British Isles, too, interest was shown in the relationship between Dutch and English. In a more general sense, ideas, arguments, and theories circulated throughout Europe. Individuals who defended their mother tongue were frequently interested in the debates on other languages as well. Although some boundaries, be they artificial or otherwise, need to be set and respected in order to create a viable research topic, it is important to remain aware of their fluid, vague, and sometimes arbitrary nature.
Periodization
The particular interest in language in the sixteenth century did not arise in a vacuum. In fact, it built on discussions that dated back to ancient times, and which were maintained throughout the medieval period.46 Discussions about loanwords, for instance, can be found in the works of
both classical and medieval orators and grammarians, such as Quintilian, Priscian, and Donatus.47 Even the famous sixteenth-century expression by defender of French Joachim Du
Bellay that ‘every language has I do not know what belonging only to itself’ seems to have a medieval predecessor: in a text written around the year 1282, translator Jean D’Antioche stated that ‘every language has its characteristics and way of speaking’.48
46 J. Kaimio, The Romans and the Greek language. Commentationes humanarum litterarum 64 (Helsinki: Societas
Scientiarum Fennica, 1979); P. Burke, ‘Introduction’. In P. Burke & R. Porter (Eds.), The Social History of Language. Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 2; E. Ruijsendaal, Letterkonst: Het klassieke grammaticamodel en de oudste Nederlandse grammatica’s (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1991); P. Wackers, ‘Opvattingen over taal en taalgebruik’. In M. Stoffers (Ed.), De middeleeuwse ideeënwereld, 1000–1300. Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen 63 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994); Law, The History of Linguistics in Europe, 112-115; Burke, Languages and Communities, 15; W. K. Percival, Studies in Renaissance Grammar (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 231; W. M. Short, Sermo, Sanguis, Semen: An Anthropology of Language in Roman Culture. Unpublished dissertation (Berkeley: University of California, 2007), 62-63, 72-73; Van Hal, “Moedertalen en taalmoeders”, 37-39; S. E. Harris, The Linguistic Past in Twelfth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 11-23.
47 O. A. Dull, ‘“Escumer le latin” : statut et fonctions de la barbarolexie dans le théâtre comique du XVe siècle :
enjeux théoriques’. Le Moyen Français, 39-41, (1996-1997), 211-212; Short, Sermo, Sanguis, Semen.
48 ‘chacune Langue à ie ne scay quoy propre seulement à elle’. Du Bellay, La deffence (1549), sig. b2r. ‘chascune
lengue si a ses proprietez et sa maniere de parler’. Jean D’Antioche quoted by: F. Berriot, ‘Langue, nation et pouvoir : les traducteurs du XIVe siècle précurseurs des humanistes de la Renaissance’. In M. T. Jones-Davies
(Ed.), Langues et nations au temps de la Renaissance (Paris: Klincksieck, 1991), 113-114; C. Boucher, La mise en scène de la vulgarisation : les traductions d’autorités en langue vulgaire aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Unpublished
16 At the other end of the temporal scale, continuing to the present day, many of the discussions that occupied the scholarly environments of the sixteenth century are still going strong. The debate on loanwords is one of these. Just think of the French Commission générale
de terminologie et de néologie (General Committee for Terminology and Neology), established
by official decree in 1996, which holds the task of proposing French equivalents for loanwords entering the French language.49 The position of Dutch as a scientific language, also, is currently
a topic for lively discussion, strongly reminiscent of engineer Simon Stevin’s promotion of Dutch as a learned language in the sixteenth century.50 How to handle the variety of languages
in present-day Belgium or Europe as a whole is another question that still has no ready-made answer.51
Despite the obvious continuity with earlier and later times, the widespread and far-reaching interest in language in the sixteenth century stands out. As remarked by Lodi Nauta: ‘No subject was more central to Renaissance culture than language’.52 Various factors
contributed to this language awareness.53 The previous century had witnessed major events,
such as the invention of printing from movable type. This made rapid and widespread distribution of language theories and excerpts of exotic and ancient languages possible, an opportunity that was seized by printers like Plantin. While the printing press thus fuelled language awareness, it also increased the chances that writings on the topic survived to become the subject of modern studies. The discovery of unknown territories across the Atlantic brought Europe in contact with new, awe-inspiring languages. Furthermore, a stream of Byzantine
49 G. Defaux, ‘Présentation’. In G. Defaux (Ed.), Lyon et l’illustration de la langue française à la Renaissance
(Lyon: ENS Éditions, 2003), 28; Nederlands, tenzij… Tweetaligheid in de geestes- en de gedrags- en maatschappijwetenschappen: Rapport van de Commissie Nederlands als wetenschapstaal (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2003), 19-21. For the text of the decree, see: <https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr>. Accessed July 2017.
50 T. Koopmans (Ed.), De toekomst van het Nederlands als wetenschapstaal: Themabijeenkomst van de Afdeling
Letterkunde van maandag 9 mei 1994 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1995); Nederlands, tenzij…; Nederlands en/of Engels? Taalkeuze met beleid in het Nederlands hoger onderwijs (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2017).
51 On the language issue in modern Belgium, see: E. Witte & H. Van Velthoven, Strijden om taal: De Belgische
taalkwestie in historisch perspectief (Kapellen: Uitgeverij Pelckmans, 2010); R. Janssens, ‘Language Conflict in Brussels: Political Mind-Set Versus Linguistic Practice’. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2015, 235 (2015); R. Willemyns, ‘Trilingual Tug-o’-War: Language Border Fluctuations in the Low Countries’. In C. Peersman, G. Rutten, & R. Vosters (Eds.), Past, Present and Future of a Language Border (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). On the multilingual situation in the present-day Netherlands, see: Talen voor Nederland (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2018). On the language policies of the European Union, see: Vogl, ‘Multilingualism’, 1-3.
52 Nauta, ‘Introduction’, ix.
53 S. Auroux, ‘Introduction : le processus de grammatisation et ses enjeux’. In S. Auroux (Ed.), Histoire des idées
17 intellectuals came West, bringing with them their knowledge of Ancient Greek and thus access to the treatises on language philosophy it harboured. All these events and developments resulted in early modern people being confronted with little-known and unknown languages. Meanwhile, a new philological attitude towards the classical languages developed in academic environments that has often been linked to the notion of humanism.54 Additionally, these
humanist and other interregional networks progressively gave expression to interregional competition, trying to outdo others.
At the same time, Europe faced an array of conflicts, such as the Italian Wars and the Anglo-Spanish war. Particularly important for the Low Countries is, of course, the Dutch Revolt, with a rebellious faction in the Low Countries in opposition with the supporters of the Habsburg Lord of the Netherlands, the Spanish King Philip II, in the second half of the century. Besides these armed conflicts, the century was marked by religious turmoil in the form of the Reformation.55 Attitudes towards language and translation of the sacred texts of Christianity
were issues that were emphasized in the religious quarrels. Contributing to the language debates, nevertheless, did not depend on confessional preference: Heyns converted to Protestantism, while his close friend Plantin—at least outwardly—remained Catholic.56 The
various troubles of the early modern era are likely to have further stimulated language reflection, as several early modern individuals expressed the idea that miscommunication led to political and religious conflict.57
Neither the early modern wars nor the rise of the printing press or humanism was singlehandedly responsible for the increase in interest in language. Together, nonetheless, they created the optimal conditions to precipitate a thriving debate at least as early as the 1540s. From this decade onwards, a steady flow of works was written and published that reflected on the mother tongues of the Low Countries, starting with a Dutch Livy translation that appeared in 1541, of which the preface defended the Dutch vernacular.58 It is likely that these topics had
already been widely discussed before this date, but there is no extant source material to confirm
54 W. T. M. Frijhoff, ‘L’État et l’éducation (XVIe–XVIIe siècles) : une perspective globale’. In: Culture et idéologie
dans la genèse de l’État moderne. Actes de la table ronde de Rome (15–17 octobre 1984) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1985), 107-108 ; Nauta, ‘Introduction’, ix.
55 Dessì Schmid & Hafner, ‘Die italienischen und französischen Akademien’, 382-383.
56 There has been much debate about Plantin’s religious views. Alastair Hamilton connected him to the Family of
Love, a heterodox sect. A. Hamilton, The Family of Love in Antwerp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); A. Meskens, ‘Liaisons dangereuses: Peter Heyns en Abraham Ortelius’. De Gulden Passer, 76-77, (1998-1999).
57 Buys, Sparks of Reason, 15-20; Kammerer & Müller, ‘Avant-Propos. Vorwort’, 16-17.
58 T. Livy, Titus Liuius, Dat is, de Roemsche historie oft Gesten (Antwerp: Joannes Grapheus for Jan Gymnick,
18 that assumption. The stream of writings certainly did not end in 1620, but the height of the discussions had passed by that time. Many participants repeated ideas that had already been formulated earlier, until new stimuli for language reflection were given by the likes of René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
The Low Countries
Although it is important to be aware of cross-European connections in the exchanges on language, it is impossible to undertake an in-depth study of the entire European language field. The chosen focus on the multilingual Low Countries comes forth from the idea that in every region, the particular local context influenced the debates to some extent.59 Thus, while all the
discussions are parts of a greater whole, local conditions incited an emphasis on specific elements. In the Low Countries, the language situation differed, for example, from that in France, where the language of the court had a much wider reach.60
The particularities of the selected geographical scope deserve further explanation. The term Low Countries refers to the geographical areas that came under the reign of Philip II in 1555. However, the majority of the sources discussing languages originate from the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Flanders, and Brabant. These four provinces constituted the economic and cultural heartland of the Low Countries. In these core regions, language encounters were frequent because of a thriving international trade, the presence of important administrative institutions, and aristocratic communities. Last but certainly not least, the language border passed right through Brabant and Flanders. Both French and Dutch furnished the sounds of everyday life there, stimulating language awareness.
In the northeastern provinces, multilingualism was certainly not absent. There were strong cultural and political ties with areas where Low and High German was spoken, while French enjoyed considerable prestige among the elite.61 The Hanseatic trade network had
brought the cities along the Rhine and IJssel in contact with speakers of an array of Low German
59 Kammerer & Müller, ‘Avant-Propos. Vorwort’, 12.
60 C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘The Language Question in the Low Countries: The Use of French and Dutch by the Dukes
of Burgundy and Their Administration’. In J. R. Hale, J. R. L. Highfield, & B. Smalley (Eds.), Europe in the Late Middle Ages (London: Hambledon Press, 1965), 388-389; K. J. S. Bostoen, Dichterschap en koopmanschap in de zestiende eeuw: Omtrent de dichters Guillaume de Poetou en Jan vander Noot (Deventer: Sub Rosa, 1987), 11; J. Jansen, ‘De taal van het hof’. De Zeventiende Eeuw, 8, 1 (1992).
61 A. Noordzij, ‘Against Burgundy: The Appeal of Germany in the Duchy of Guelders’. In R. Stein & J. Pollmann
19 language forms. The wars of the sixteenth century and the soldiers speaking a variety of languages they brought to the northern regions added further language encounters. However, in these regions, vernacular networks of knowledge such as the chambers of rhetoric were much rarer than in Holland, Zeeland, Flanders, and Brabant, and the number of surviving works reflecting on language that have been produced there is substantially lower.62
Languages
The early modern Low Countries were marked by various languages: Latin, Dutch, French, and Frisian. The last of these, spoken in the Lordship of Friesland, played a minor role as a written language, and there are no traces of a lively discussion about its form and status in the sixteenth century.63 It will therefore remain largely outside the scope of this study, which will instead
focus on the principal vernaculars Dutch and French.
While some individuals called for uniform Dutch and French languages, such standard forms were not yet available in the sixteenth century. Both languages were still in a fluid state, even though language debaters tried to forge them into particular shapes. The terms ‘Dutch’ or ‘French’, when applied to this period, refer to an array of different dialects, regional varieties, and ways of spelling and pronunciation that were not a uniform entity at the time but that were, by contemporaries, considered as a group that could be distinguished from others. Whenever the term ‘Dutch’ is used here, the whole of Low Germanic dialects used within the Low Countries is meant. In the fifteenth and especially the sixteenth century, an awareness was taking shape of the differences between Dutch and German, which began to differentiate particularly in their written form.64 This awareness was also reflected in the shifts regarding the
terminology that was used to refer to these tongues.65 Attention to Low German as it was spoken
in present-day Germany will therefore only be paid when it is mentioned in the source material.
62 Van Dixhoorn, Lustige geesten, 36-48.
63 For early modern literary works in Frisian, see: M. Spies, ‘Friese literatuur en de Nederlandse canon in de
zeventiende eeuw’. In P. Boersma, P. H. Breuker, L. G. Jansma, & J. van der Vaart (Eds.), Philologia Frisica anno 1999: Lêzingen fan it fyftjinde Frysk filologekongres 8, 9 en 10 desimber 1999 (Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy).
64 L. De Grauwe, ‘Emerging Mother-Tongue Awareness: The Special Case of Dutch and German in the Middle
Ages and the Early Modern Period’. In A. R. Linn & N. McLelland (Eds.), Standardization: Studies from the Germanic Languages. Vol. 23 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002), 104-107; L. De Grauwe, ‘The Germanic Vernaculars’. In M. Goyens & W. Verbeke (Eds.), The Dawn of the Written Vernacular in Western Europe (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 473; Van der Sijs, Taal als mensenwerk, 100-101. See: Chapter 2.1.
65 W. de Vreese, ‘Over de benamingen onzer taal inzonderheid over “Nederlandsch”’. Verslagen en Mededelingen
van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Taal- en Letterkunde, (1909); J. Hafner, ‘Comment désigne-t-on les langues vernaculaires au XVIe siècle’. In E. Kammerer & J.-D. Müller (Eds.), Imprimeurs et libraires de la
20 The term ‘French’, similarly, refers here to all variants of French as they were spoken both within and outside the Low Countries. It is worth emphasizing that French was not, in the sixteenth century, a foreign language from the point of view of native speakers of Dutch in the Low Countries. To refer to speakers of French and to the area where French was the native language, the term ‘francophone’ is applied. It is used in clear distinction from the political notion of Francophonie, with a capital F, which targets the whole of countries that are currently bound by the French language.66 The term ‘francophony’ is used here as an objective marker,
accounting for the existence of a French-speaking community outside of France before the age of colonialism.
Concerning the notion of dialect, it is important to mention that in the period under study, this term did not have the meaning it has today. The terms lingua and dialectus were both used to cover a wide range of frequently overlapping meanings.67 In the now often used
definition of Haugen, a language is a dialect that has been standardized.68 In the sixteenth
century, Dutch and French had not gone through this process. The term ‘language’ is therefore conceived here in the definition of John Earl Joseph as ‘a system of elements and rules conceived broadly enough to admit variant ways of using it’.69 These variant ways include the
different local dialects of the language, which themselves also admit some variation. In fact, Mireille Huchon has suggested that in the case of French, it is more suitable to speak of regional varieties than of dialects.70 The term ‘vernacular’ here designates any non-classical language
that was spoken as a mother tongue in early modern Europe.71
66 The literature on this concept is vast. For a clear overview of the possible meanings of the term ‘francophonie’,
see: S. Farandijs, ‘Repères dans l’histoire de la francophonie’. Hermès, 3, 40 (2003). Earlier students of the pre-colonial French-speaking world have also struggled with terminology. Ad Putter and Keith Busby, for instance, opted for the term ‘Medieval Francophonia’ without wishing to deny a continuity with modern times. Putter & Busby, ‘Introduction’, 11-12.
67 Haugen, ‘Dialect, Language, Nation’, 922-923; Burke, Languages and Communities, 36; G. J. Metcalf, On
Language Diversity and Relationship from Bibliander to Adelung. (T. Van Hal & R. Van Rooy, Eds.) (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2013), 72; P. Cohen, ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est que le français? Les destins d’une catégorie linguistique, XVIe–XVIIIe siècle’. In D. Lagorgette (Ed.), Repenser l’histoire du français (Chambéry: Université de Savoie,
2014); Frederickx & Van Hal, Johannes Goropius Becanus, 117; T. Van Hal & R. Van Rooy, ‘“Differing only in Dialect”, or How Collocations can co-shape Concepts’. Language & Communication, 56, (2017), 98-104; R. Van Rooy, Through the Vast Labyrinth of Languages and Dialects: The Emergence and Transformations of a Conceptual Pair in the Early Modern Period (ca. 1478–1782). Unpublished dissertation (Leuven: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2017), 79-103.
68 Haugen, ‘Dialect, Language, Nation’; Van der Wal, De moedertaal centraal, 1-2, 23-41. 69 Joseph, Eloquence and Power, 1.
70 M. Huchon, Le français de la Renaissance (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1988), 18.
71 J. Green, Chasing the Sun: Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries They Made (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996),
21 While varieties of both French and Dutch acted as mother tongue to a particular part of the population, many people, such as Lambrecht, Heyns, Marnix, and Plantin, spoke both, and thus acted as go-betweens.72 Whenever an individual is said to have been bilingual, the reader
should be attentive to the fact that knowledge of non-native languages comes in different degrees and forms and can change over time.73 Plantin only learned Dutch after settling in
Antwerp in his late twenties, for instance. To give another example, if Heyns’s schoolchildren learned Latin verses by heart without having learned the language, they can hardly be said to have any competence in the language, while they did use it.74 Language competencies cannot
be considered in binary terms. They can be passive or active, concern speaking and listening or reading and writing, and they are not stable over time.
Finally, some remarks should be made on the terminology surrounding the coexistence of multiple languages on a societal and on an individual level. It is important to avoid false implications about connections between the two.75 If an individual possesses knowledge of
multiple languages, this does not imply that these languages are spoken widely in the society or region to which that individual belongs. Marnix was an exception in the Low Countries for knowing Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, and Italian. Vice versa, if two local languages, such as French and Dutch, are spoken in a region, this does not mean that every individual speaks both.
Using a clear terminology helps to separate the language situation on a societal and an individual level. To refer to the language abilities of individuals, therefore, the term ‘plurilingual’ is used, whereas the term ‘multilingual’ is applied to regions where more than one language is present.76 Texts will be called ‘bilingual’ when they meet the definition of
72 On the notion of ‘go-between’, see: C. Berkvens-Stevelinck & H. Bots, ‘Introduction’. In C. Berkvens-Stevelinck,
H. Bots, & J. Häseler (Eds.), Les grands intermédiaires culturels de la République des Lettres : études de réseaux de correspondances du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005); P. Burke, ‘The Renaissance
Translator as Go-Between’. In A. Höfele & W. Von Koppenfels (Eds.), Renaissance Go-Betweens: Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005); A. Höfele & W. Von Koppenfels, ‘Introduction’. In A. Höfele & W. Von Koppenfels (Eds.), Renaissance Go-Betweens: Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005).
73 Braunmüller & Ferraresi, ‘Introduction’, 3; Appel & Muysken, Language Contact, 2-4.
74 See, for a discussion of this question: V. Reinburg, French Books of Hours: Making an Archive of Prayer, c.
1400–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), esp. 87-88; A. Adamska, ‘Latin and Three Vernaculars in East Central Europe from the Point of View of the History of Social Communication’. In M. Garrison, A. P. Orbán, & M. Mostert (Eds.), Spoken and Written Language: Relations between Latin and the Vernacular Languages in the Earlier Middle Ages. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 335.
75 Appel & Muysken, Language Contact, 1-6.
76 As pointed out by Pierre Swiggers, an additional reason to adopt this terminology is that the Council of Europe
